Cynicism

I could have drowned in the poisoned well of cynicism, early in my life, and early in my Christian walk, if it were not for certain very supernatural things which have happened to me.

As a small child, I saw the reality of survival. Although my parents came from old, established, land-owning families, we were extremely poor. This was the depths of the Great Depression, I saw them, as well as everyone else in the community doing everything possible just to survive. People were starving to death, their farm animals were starving. The first pastor I remember at the country church, which had been built by both my mother and father's grandparents in the mid-1800s, would pray on his knees in the pulpit. Men in the church would get down on their knees to pray, their faith was the only thing they had. They would carry food to one another.

I give many thousands of dollars each year for scholarships and awards, gifts to pastors, trying to encourage people in God's work. I believe that Satan's greatest weapon is that of discouragement.

I still remember how discouraged I was when I made my confession of faith in the church, and when I was baptized. One would have thought that it would have been a time of much encouragement. Only one aunt talked with me about my decision, this supernatural development in my life, the greatest act of a human life. It is hard to believe that every person, especially a child, who makes the decision to follow Christ, in baptism, should be encouraged by everyone.

Each Sunday, I listen to worship services from a Winston Salem Baptist church (Woodland Baptist). Each Sunday, the dynamic pastor of this large, independent Baptist church, baptizes several in the baptistry. I can hear the congregation praising God and clapping when each person is baptized, as Christ, buried by baptized unto death, raised to walk in newness of life, Jesus when He was baptized, went up out of the water. The initial ordinance of the Baptist church, baptism, like the recurrent ordinance, Lord's Supper, supernatural acts of obedience unto God. It is only when you love the supernatural of your salvation, that you can understand faith...action based on belief, sustained by confidence.

So many, in church and otherwise, just read or recite rote prayers, “the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous person availeth much” (James 5:16), God hears real prayers. If it is no more than just “Help!”. Only when you know the reality of prayer, can you know the reality of the supernatural. One of the finest young men I have ever known, an eagle scout, a solid church worker, I had prescribed contact lenses for him. He was on a scout outing at a large scout camporee, on a trail, he lost one of his contact lenses. I asked him, “how did you find it in that wilderness.” He looked straight at me, and then said, “you know, I see almost nothing without lenses, I could still see with one eye. I prayed for thirty minutes, and then I would search for thirty minutes. I found the lens laying on a leaf, a miracle of God.”

On the staff of an army hospital at Fort McClellen, Alabama, active in the Parker Memorial church in Anaston there, one young couple would invite me to their home for lunch, most of the time it was just sandwiches. They had two young, healthy children, he was an executive with General Motors.

In later years, they came by my beach house to visit me. After I had left the military, she had another baby, Susan, a down syndrome child. They told me how God had blessed their lives with this child, even though they were aging. They would continue to write me about her progress, her ability to memorize scripture. He wrote, “I don't know what we would have done without her after the others went to college. She was a source of prayer before birth and in her life.”

Strokes are a part of my father's family, most of his family are bedridden with strokes before death. My father's oldest sister, a woman of unusual ability, having helped her husband acquire a fortune, active in every area of church life, was in bed after a stroke for years. I never saw her but once during that time, drawn up in a fetal position, but still mentally alert. My uncle gave up everything else in his business life just to care for her. They had a house on the lake, he would put her on the porch so she could watch the water, water in which she loved to fish. He purchased a van so he could drive her around and describe things to her, he made sure she had exactly what she wanted to eat, even though, towards the end, she reached a place where she could no longer talk. At her funeral, he said to me, “I loved her so much, she was my entire life.” This is the supernatural human character which breaks down cynicism.

I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. (John 17:9-10) With every answer to prayer, every manifestation of God's love, you lose cynicism. Those who do not know God cannot understand God. You ask, how can you know? The best answer I have, those who love God's word, fourteen times in the epistle of John, we are told that we can know. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.
Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:1-2)